Experience and truth

Of course, you can use Kant (or anyone other philosopher of your liking) to talk about what experience is. But if you use these thinkers (of the last 1000 years or so) to think about experience, you will be trapped in a set of problems: (a) you will have to talk about sensory input (no matter what technical term you use here), which cognition works on; (b) the world as something that provides these inputs; (c) distinguishing subjectivity and objectivity of the perception of the world accordingly and so on. Ultimately, truth becomes the final arbiter of everything.

In contrast stands Indian thinking that talks about ‘forms’ (Rupa, Rasa, Sparsha, Sabda, Gandha etc) that interact with our abilities (that includes cognition as a part) and about how this world of forms interacts with us. This leads to our notion(s) of experience. In this case, we do not talk about indoctrination but about learning and changing the processes of learning.

I have decided to take the second route because it helps me find solutions to problems. The first route blocks even the noticing that there are problems.

Of course, I have not yet written out even the outlines of the second route, whereas the first has many champions over the last 500 years. To outline the second route absorbing what cognitive sciences and multiple psychologies (not to speak of biology) tell us about ourselves is a huge undertaking, which I cannot possibly complete before I die. Yet.

 

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